College - to Slack or Not to Slack?

I graduate with my Bachelor's degree in May. I'm an English major, which is the 3rd incarnation of a major I've held, and I do love it. The problem I am facing now is that I must leave behind the college town, parties, and most of the friends who've become like family to me during the last four years in order to head into the "real world" and graduate schools. I am not prepared.

My outlook on the English major, at first, was simple: I love to read so this is easy. I made my decision lightly, realizing that I had read most of the texts previously and could simply refresh my memory using the internet if I did not feel like reading them over again. It became so bad that even the texts that I had not read were becoming internet fodder, and I can unproudly say that I have never read an entire assignment in all of my four years at this university. I skimmed through by what knowledge I retained from elementary school and high school study of the classics and what I could find on internet summary sites. I hate myself for doing this.

It turns out that I want to be a professor for the rest of my life. My goal is to obtain a Ph.D. in English, begin teaching, and while I teach, attend classes to obtain post-doctoral doctorates. It sounds great and like a perfect plan for someone to loves literature and has an English degree, but I am scared. I slacked all through college, and now I feel completely unprepared for graduate school which I will hopefully be able to attend in the fall.

Recent personal events have made me realize my horrible mistakes in how I approached college, and I hope that I can persuade at least someone who is on the same path I took to veer off and run back to the fork and go another direction. College is made out to be the golden-years of a not-yet-adult person's life, and it is. Honestly. The problem, though, is that it is not ALL golden. You need to work for the classes you take so you can get something out of the money you pay. You need to work so that you can move forward in your life after you get your degree and not sit and wonder what exactly you've learned those last four years.